Global Warming 33 Year Birthday a Celebration of Failures

Guest essay by Larry Hamlin

Climate alarmists are celebrating the 33 years that have passed since the June 23, 1988 Democratic Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing that opened the door on global warming climate alarmism with testimony from Committee Democratic Senators and supposed “experts” sharing their speculation of sensationalized doomsday perspectives allegedly caused by increasing global CO2 emissions.

A detailed review of the testimony from that hearing after 33 years of recorded climate history reveals a litany of the hearings flawed and failed speculation, conjecture and predictions of climate outcomes establishing the fact that the hearing got everything wrong from start to finish and in fact represents a celebration of an extraordinary number of failed predictions.

At the time of the hearing some regions of the Midwest and Southeast were undergoing a severe drought which led many Democratic Senators and other “experts” to exploit this circumstance (as they always do with normal weather events including droughts in the U.S. West this year) and offer extensive speculative claims that the U.S. could expect additional droughts and heat waves in the future because of growing global CO2 emissions.

The 33 years that have passed since then have proven these Democratic Senators and “experts” to be wrong with EPA and NOAA data clearly establishing that the U.S. and global droughts have not increased over this period and neither have U.S. heat waves as shown by the data below as is the case for virtually every other climate area addressed at this hearing with the specific information following for each of these areas discussed in the material below.

Numerous Democratic Senators and “experts” claimed that the global temperature anomaly would climb by about 1.4 Degrees C by year 2021 from 1986 levels based on a NASA GISS climate model unless emissions were immediately reduced. UAH satellite measurements of global temperature which commenced in 1979 show that the global temperature anomaly has only increased since these hearings by 0.49 Degrees C by year 2021 nearly 3 times less than the flawed speculation at these hearings. The flawed NASA GISS climate model projections and UAH actual measured satellite data are shown below.

Additionally, global CO2 emissions have climbed significantly since 1988 driven by huge increases in CO2 emissions by the world’s developing nations that represent 65% of total global CO2 and yet the NASA GISS model claimed global temperature anomaly increase didn’t happen. This clearly suggests that natural climate variation is driving global climate not manmade CO2 emissions. 

Subsequent to the 1988 Senate hearing on global warming the UN IPCC has conducted a number of climate analysis reports and concluded that there are significant limitations to climate models being able to provide accurate future climate predictions with these limitations being unresolvable.

The UN IPCC Third Assessment Report (AR3) was issued in year 2001 more than a decade after the 1988 hearing. That report finally acknowledged that it is not possible to develop climate models that can accurately model global climate and provide future climate predictions.

Specifically, the report in Section 14.2.2.2 noted:

“In sum, a strategy must recognize what is possible. In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by generation of ensembles model solutions.”

Furthermore, the climate model scenarios used to evaluate future climate behavior are characterized as being uncertain (defined as “plausible” or “illustrative”) making their suggested outcomes simply speculation and conjecture and unsuited for massively intrusive and costly political actions.        

Numerous Democratic Senators and “experts” claimed that the rate of coastal sea level rise would increase to 2.5 inches per decade because of rising CO2 but NOAA tide gauge data through year 2020 (33 years after the Senate hearings) establishes that the global absolute rate of sea level rise is only about 0.7 inches per decade strikingly below the hearings exaggerated and proven to be flawed sea level rise claims. Additionally, NOAA tide gauge data at hundreds of coastal locations around the U.S. shows no change in the rate of coastal sea level at these locations as demonstrated by the longest U.S. tide gauge 164-year record at the Battery location in New York shown below. Again, the hearings exaggerated coastal sea level rise claims have been proven to be wrong. 

Many speculative claims were made during the Senate hearing that increasing CO2 emissions are driving more forest fires around the world but once again these flawed claims were shown to be wrong based upon NASA satellite measurements proving that global wildfires have a decreasing trend as shown below.

Speculation was offered at the Senate hearing concerning supposed negative impacts on global greening caused by increasing greenhouse gas emissions but NASA satellite observations reflect the opposite occurring as noted in the study below indicating that from a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetation has shown significant greening over the last 35 years due to rising levels of CO2. Additionally, the hearings claimed negative impacts of greenhouse gases on global forests are contradicted by a recent study by the University of Maryland that shows otherwise also noted below.

Numerous Democratic Senators and “experts” claimed that increasing CO2 emissions would result in devastating reductions in global food production. After 33 years of history the data shows world record high food production levels of grains, wheat, corn, rice, soybeans, etc. as noted below. The exaggerated doomsday claims by Democratic Senators and “experts” at the hearing were again proven to be wrong. 

The June 23, 1988 Senate hearing on global warming based on 33 years of history has proven the hearings exaggerate claims to be flawed, false and failed. The 33 year birthday celebration by climate alarmist of this sorry event is in fact a celebration of global warming failures.